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Robert Bailey, Oxfam's senior climate advisor, said: "The food system must be transformed. By 2050, there will be 9 billion people on the planet and demand for food will have increased by 70 per cent.

“This demand must be met despite flatlining yields, increasing water scarcity, and growing competition over land.

“And agriculture must rapidly adapt to a changing climate and slash its carbon footprint.”

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Famine is likely to increase

Food prices will continue to rise as the demand is not met, leading to increased famine across the globe.

Professor Julian Cribb, author of ‘The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It’, warned in his book: “The world has ignored the ominous constellation of factors that now make feeding humanity sustainably our most pressing task - even in times of economic and climatic crisis.

"It is arriving even faster than climate change.”

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The global population will reach nine billion by 2050

A separate report from the Global Harvest Initiative says that action needs to begin now to solve the impending crisis.

Margaret Zeigler, executive director of GHI, said: "Countries need to prioritise agriculture and the growing of food in more sustainable methods.

"If we don't start now, we'll have a problem sooner, even by 2030.”

Ms Zeigler added that more animals will need to be farmed to sustain the rising population, which will also add to climate change.

Heartbreaking photographs depict children starving to death

Tue, February 21, 2017

Almost 1.4 million children are at imminent risk of death from acute malnutrition this year as famine looms in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, UNICEF revealed.

Emmanuel Kenyi, a 2.5-year-old child with severe malnutrition, sits on a bed while a nutrition specialist prepares his milk at the malnutrition ward of the clinic run by the International Medical Corps (IMC) in the UN Protection of Civilians (PoC)

She said: ”We're also going to see more levels of methane emission from cattle if we don't learn how to produce more using less or the same resources.”

However, the report from Oxfam concluded that all hope is not yet lost.

It reads: "Thankfully, the vast transformation needed is already under way led by individuals, organisations and movements who have taken the future into their own hands.”